LA Fire Guild / SAFFE

Okay, so the quarterly SAFFE meeting has come around (I missed the last one). And we have a whole lot of new stuff to report.

First, I've been looking back over the last couple of years. I've seen show after show with fire extinguishers and spotters. I've been asked "Where's your spotter?" at Burning Man rather than "What's a spotter?". And, in general, I think that there is at least a base level of safety pervasive through the fire arts community, and fewer superstitions. These changes are the very heart of what we really wanted to accomplish with NAFAA back in 2002. So, for a mere 5 years of dedication and cooperation, I think we've done well.

This makes me wonder. Is it time for NAFAA to take a new direction now? Or should we stay that first, best place for info, geared mostly at the new and uniformed. One option to taking a new direction is our second report.

For those who don't know, or don't remember, there is a new guild forming in LA. As far as I know, they haven't officiated a name, but are going by the LA Fire Performer Safety Council. This group formed in response to the request we filled last year for a bullet point list for the SAFFE council. They're new and they're eager.

Most importantly, they've been working with the CA State Fire Marshall and an LA county inspector to develop their own set of codes for local insertion. The county fire marshal has endorsed these documents for broad spectrum community review. I mention this to everyone as these codes could receive statewide or even national attention, particularly wherever filming is done.

The first is an extension of the effort NAFAA made for it's bullet point list. This safety checklist is a DRAFT for peer review. Please send me any comments you have regarding them and I will put them in digest form (anonymously if you like) and forward them to the review members (state, county and guild). You can download them from:
www.nafaa.org/checklist.v1.0a.pdf

The second is a proposed, standardized, fire performance permit application. In short, this is what the fire marshal would give to us in order to get the information they need to write a permit. It might be worth the effort to buzz this by the local fire department.
www.nafaa.org/permit.app.v1.0a.pdf

And finally, this guild has come up with their own NFPA plug-in set of safety standards. I don't thing the FMs care as much about this, but I'll forward comments to the appropriate council as offered.
www.nafaa.org/standards.v1.0a.pdf

As our final point, I have been approached to open a new research project. It seems as though it's time to start digging into the proximate audience issue. Many permits are written with specific audience separations, but the reasons for them are widely varied. One possible source of this separation may be the radiant heat separation rules from the NFPA. So, we're going to take a serious look into audience separation. But we could use any useful ideas regarding hypothesese or approaches. So let me know.

That's all for now. Please send your comments soon.